


Nephilim

by Brighid



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 08:34:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A boy and his better angels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nephilim

**Author's Note:**

> Response to series finale. And you know, I missed my rat.

Nephilim

He sat in the tire swing, small face dirty with the morning's play and the afternoon's tears. Marya had laughed at him, called him names. All because he said her book was wrong, that the pictures in it didn't look right. Didn't look like what he *knew* to be the truth. The pictures in her book were ... pretty, and pink and too flat, too girly. They wore dresses and had curly hair and kissy-lips and little harps and some were just fat babies ... and none of them looked like angels.

Not like any angels he knew, anyway.

"What's with the tears, kid?" 

He looked up, squinted at the bright ring of sunlight around the dark shadow in front of him. "Marya said I was a stupid baby. Said I didn't know nothing," he said, voice still thick and snotty with his crying.

"To hell with Marya, then," and the angel, his angel, was leaning in close to him, smiling wide and white. "You know you're not, I know you're not. That's all that matters, right?"

He swiped at his face, hard, and nodded. His throat hurt less, he felt like smiling for the first time in forever. He loved it when his angel came to him.

He'd always had his angel, he just hadn't known what to call him, not until Sunday School, not until Momma had told him about Guardian Angels who love you and watch you and protect you. When he'd heard that, he knew the man he saw, that nobody else saw, had to be his angel. Because he was there when there were tears, or blood, or loneliness. His angel talked and listened and walked beside him, and taught him how to be safe and strong and not afraid of anything.

But his angel wasn't pretty or pink or girly. His hair didn't curl, his mouth wasn't all kissy, lipstick pink. He wore black and he smiled big and laughed big and was more real and more wonderful than anything in Marya's stupid book.

He told his angel so, climbing down out off his swing, coming over to lean against his side. And his angel laughed and ruffled his hair and let him sleep away the last of his tears, a brief nap in late afternoon sunlight.

And then they walked down the road, and they talked, and his angel asked him the important questions. Like a test, only William, after five years, knew all the answers.

"How can you tell a devil, William?" This was always the first question.

"By the bump on the back of his neck, or green blood, or eyes that go all black or a face that changes." And his angel smiled, gave him a high-five.

"What do you do to get away from a devil, William?" This was always the second question.

"The bumpy ones? You throw the special rocks, the ones from the quarry, or you stick a pocket-knife just under the bump. Black-eyed ones you run as fast as you can, never let them touch you. Don't breathe around the ones who bleed green. Run as fast as you can." And his angel, he smiled again.

"And if the devils come?" This was always the last question.

"I call for my Uncle Walter, tell him my name is William. That I need to see Fox and Dana." He said the phone number his angel had taught him, the one he'd learned even before he'd known his phone number at home. "Is he really my uncle?" he asked curiously, because he'd asked his Momma once, and she'd just shook her head, said he didn't have an Uncle Walter, just Uncle Timothy in Oregon, and goodness, where'd he gotten that idea?

"In all the ways that count, yeah. He's your uncle." His angel smiled at him, a big grin, all teeth, and it didn't matter what Marya said.

Alex was his angel.

In all the ways that counted.

)0(


End file.
